1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method for adsorption/desorption of lithium ions, and more particularly to a method for adsorption/desorption of lithium ions, which employs a counter current decantation process in adsorption/desorption of lithium ions, thereby enabling efficient and economically feasible extraction of lithium ions from brine.
2. Description of the Related Art
With recent rapid development of mobile phones, notebook computers and electric automobiles, worldwide demand for movable energy sources has rapidly increased.
Particularly, application of secondary lithium batteries is explosively increasing. Currently, the secondary lithium battery industry has been developed centered on Korea, Japan, China, and the like, and a rapid increase in demand for secondary lithium batteries has resulted in a rapid increase in consumption of lithium which is used as an essential raw material for the secondary lithium battery.
In addition, although it is difficult to quantify the amount of lithium ion batteries required for sunlight and wind power plants, it is expected that the sunlight and wind power plants will drive future growth of lithium ion batteries together with green cars. For this reason, lithium will be positioned at the center of the energy revolution which will be led by secondary batteries for the next several dozen years and a technique for effective extraction of lithium ions is thus considered to be inevitable for resource security in view of a long-term policy.
Recently, many studies have been focused on effective extraction of lithium ions from brine.
Brine contains many ionic components such as lithium ions, magnesium ions, sodium ions, chlorine ions, and the like.
A process of extracting lithium ions from brine may include removal of magnesium, adsorption/desorption of lithium ions, and the like.
Here, for adsorption/desorption of lithium ions, an adsorbent is added to brine from which magnesium ions have been removed, to adsorb the lithium ions for a predetermined period of time, and the adsorbent having the lithium ions adsorbed thereto is then subjected to acid treatment using a strong acid solution such as a hydrochloric acid solution to desorb the lithium ions therefrom.
However, such a conventional process for adsorption/desorption of lithium ions requires a long period of time for adsorption/desorption of the lithium ions and can extract a small amount of lithium ions upon adsorption/desorption, thereby providing low yield.